James Franco is known as an Oscar-nominated movie star, a terrible Oscar co-host, a model, an artist, an author, and a general all-around weirdo, but he’s also a surprisingly prolific director. And his latest film, The Sound and the Fury, has just unveiled its first trailer.

Based on the classic novel by William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury chronicles the decline of the once-proud Compson family over three decades in Jefferson, Mississippi. Franco himself plays Benjy, the disabled Compson son, and Seth Rogen, Danny McBride, Scott Haze, Tim Blake Nelson, Loretta Devine, Joey King, and Ahna O’Reilly also star. (Yes, this is a Franco / Rogen / McBride movie that is a straight-up serious drama.) Watch The Sound and the Fury trailer after the jump. Read More »

James Franco pays the bills (and has a great time) in big movies, and in friend projects such as This Is the End and The Interview. On the side, he has become a prolific art house director. His latest directorial effort to hit theaters is a really something to behold. Based on the Cormac McCarthy novel Child of God, this latest film from Franco is a tightly-crafted and very effective story of a wildly unstable man.

Child of God is pure, undiluted McCarthy. Anyone who has hoped to see the core of a novel like Blood Meridian translated to the screen should see this one. If nothing else, it makes clear why putting hardcore McCarthy concepts into a mainstream movie is particularly difficult. Child of God is grimy, ugly, and odd. The lead, Scott Haze (above), gives one of the most raw, rub-till-it-bleeds performances I’ve seen in a long time. His work is chilling. (Tim Blake Nelson and Jim Parrack also co-star, and Franco appears in a brief role.) Check out the latest trailer below. Read More »

2013 was a big year for James Franco. Not only did he star in a whole bunch of things, from Spring Breakers to Oz the Great and Powerful to This Is the End to ABC’s The Mindy Project, he also hit the film festival circuit with three separate films that he’d directed. Two of them, Interior. Leather Bar. and As I Lay Dying, have already received limited theatrical releases, but the third, Child of God, is still on its way.

Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, the crime drama stars Scott Haze as an outcast who retreats from society, and becomes progressively more disturbed and degraded. The first teaser hit back in August, and now a full-length trailer has finally arrived. Tim Blake Nelson, Jim Parrack, and James Franco also star. Check it out after the jump.

While Ridley Scott brings Cormac McCarthy‘s first original screenplay to the big screen, James Franco is tackling another of his stories.

The multi-hyphenate’s latest directorial effort is Child of God, based on McCarthy’s novel of the same title. Scott Haze leads the cast as Ballard, a violent outsider turned serial killer in ’60s Tennessee. The first teaser has hit the web, and you can see it after the jump.